While Pantheon channels Intamin's insanity into an appropriately powerful, iconic, and personality-packed ride that makes use of Busch Gardens Williamsburg's lore and terrain, it's joined in the company's collection by another new-for-'22 addition at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay...
IRON GWAZI
The Manufacturer: RMC
By far the most groundbreaking coaster innovations this century has come via Rocky Mountain Construction (RMC), who burst onto the scene in 2011 with something unbelievable. That year, the coaster newcomers took over a beleaugered wooden Texas Giant at Six Flags Over Texas, transforming the shuddering, violent wood coaster into something entirely new. Pairing the 30 year old ride's existing wooden supports with new "IBox" track, the New Texas Giant was reborn as a modern steel behemoth capable of RMC's now-iconic, chaotic ride manuevers.
(Soon after, RMC launched an alternative to steel "IBox" track: "Topper Track," which is generally classified as wooden but gives wooden coasters the sensation and capabilities of steel. We discussed the distinction in our look at the world's first truly "hybrid" coaster – Dollywood's Lightning Rod – which uses both. Both "IBox and Topper Track have been used to reconfigure existing wooden coasters, and as part of from-scratch builds.)
Suddenly, parks' ubiquitous, notorious, headache-inducing, oversized, jack-hammering wooden coasters went from seldom-ridden remnants of another time to prime real estate. RMC became hot gossip around amusement park discussion boards, weilding the unimaginable power to turn antique coasters into headlining thrills once more. To date, RMC has converted nearly a dozen old wooden coasters into modern masterpieces using IBox track – including several Six Flags installations (Iron Rattler at Fiesta Texas, Twisted Colossus at Magic Mountain, Wicked Cyclone at New England, and Medusa in Mexico) and Kings Dominion's Twisted Timbers (a re-do of the park's notorious Hurler).
Still, the most iconic use of RMC's IBox track was undoubtedly Cedar Point's Steel Vengeance – a jaw-dropping 200-foot, mile-long, 4-inversion, ultra-intense masterpiece built on the bones of the park's former Mean Streak. At least, that was the most iconic...
The Story
After all, no one had a woodie in need of a second life quite like Busch Gardens Tampa Bay. Opened in 1999 (ironically, the same year as another dueling coaster – Dueling Dragons at Universal's Islands of Adventure), Gwazi was named after a fictionalized, psuedo-African creature bearing the head of a tiger and the body of a lion. Fittingly, the ride's two intertwined coaster tracks – Lion and Tiger – would shudder through twin, 3,500 foot layouts, visually "clashing" in a number of near-miss encounters along the rides' courses.
At just 100 feet tall, Gwazi packed a punch... maybe to a fault. Notorious for its roughness, Gwazi's life was relatively short in coaster terms... In 2011, the ride's original trains were replaced with a new set meant to make the ride more bearable. Even still, the Tiger side was officially decommissioned in 2012, ending the ride's "dueling" and halving its capacity. The Lion half limped along until 2015, when Gwazi was officially retired, reverting to the dreaded "Standing But Not Operating" (SBNO) status.
Especially at the height of RMC's debut – as year after year, more colossal wooden coasters were introduced to IBox transformations – forums were filled with dreams of Gwazi getting the "RMC treatment." But year after year, it didn't. The interwoven wooden coasters were erased from the park map, but stood silently over its entrance. One of the weirdest coaster footnotes in any U.S. park. In 2018, the park announced that something would finally take Gwazi's place in 2020... but when construction began in 2019, Gwazi wasn't demolished. Instead, its track was removed as reprofiling began. Coaster enthusiast daydreams had come true.
The Ride
Busch Gardens Tampa Bay spent 2020 and 2021 building up to the opening of IRON GWAZI. Now ret-conning the "Gwazi" as a crocodilian creature of myth rather than a lion-tiger hybrid, the new ride makes use of (and heavily builds upon) the original Gwazi's foundation to build a ride twice as tall as the Lion and Tiger ever were. At 206 feet, Iron Gwazi bests Steel Vengeance by one foot. Eschewing RMC's standard, blazing red track, Iron Gwazi is a matte purple gleaming against the Florida-sun-bleached wooden structure beneath.
Like Steel Vengeance (and as with most RMC IBox reduxes), it's spectacularly intense, incredibly fast, and unpredictably wild. Both offer "weird" sections of trick track that bank counterintuitively, or tilt riders left or right unexpectedly after an era of B&M precision. Both include barrel roll downdrops, zero-G stalls, banked airtime hills, and will-they-or-won't-they flirtation with almost-inversions that are exited mid-twist.
But in terms of personality, it also differs beautifully from Cedar Point's signature RMC. Whereas Steel Vengence is white knuckle in its relentless pace, Iron Gwazi feels "bigger" in the sense that it accelerates through massive turns, winding through its own structure so as to hide what's to come. There's less ejector air than on Steel Vengeance, instead focusing on beautiful pacing. It makes sense. Iron Gwazi relies less on Gwazi than Steel Vengeance did on Mean Streak, meaning designers were able to invent rather than augment.
Take a look at the point-of-view video below to get a sense of the experience of Iron Gwazi:
Since its announcement – and through its delays from 2020 to 2021, then 2021 to 2022) fans have eagerly awaited the opening of Iron Gwazi. Now, it's here, and proof that RMC's still got it. Though some fans rightly mourn the loss of so many wooden classics and legendary behemoths to the steel rebuilds of RMC, one thing is certain: each resulting new ride has been a masterpiece in its own right, and Iron Gwazi is no exception.
The New Coaster Wars
It's easy to see why. There's nothing "cookie cutter" about Iron Gwazi or Pantheon. Each is vibrant and alive and distinctly unique. Neither is a clone. Neither could be ordered out of a catalogue. They're not plopped down on parking lots. They do the unexpected. And in an industry that's spent decades ruled by the graceful, widely-appealing, crowd-pleasing, widespread, and (don't get us wrong –) graceful innovations of B&M, they feel particularly wild and ambitious and bold and captivating... and maybe even "too intense" for some!
But that's what makes both Pantheon and Iron Gwazi harbingers of the future. The "Coaster Wars" of the 1990s and 2000s have resoundingly come to an end. Every park that wants one already has its ubiquitous inverted coaster; dive coaster; wing coaster; hypercoaster; even 300-foot gigacoasters. We can't build much taller or faster. Every self-respecting "coaster park" has a respectable coaster lineup. Period. The era of parks out-building each other is over.
Instead, we've entered a new chapter in the Coaster Wars – one where parks need only out-build themselves. Forget off-the-shelf, out-of-the-catalogue additions. The future looks a whole lot more like Pantheon, Iron Gwazi, Velocicoaster, Mystic Timbers, Steel Vengeance, Taron, Verbolten, Maverick, and more... Rides born of the park's history and built on their existing DNA; rides drawn from the dreams of coaster enthusiasts. Custom! Complementary to the park's lineup! Diversified! One-of-a-kind! Thoughtful! Packed with personality!
So if there's a lesson to be learned from Busch Gardens' Golden Year and the two new classics it's debuted, let it be that the future is bright for amusement parks, and innovation is still the name of the game. But rather than breaking records, let's hope that that innovation is used to make rides that are better fits, more creative and clever, and more uniquely-tailored to their parks than ever before.
Comments
I believe these “new” in park coaster wars were actually started when Dollywood announced Lightning Rod. That assured in a brand new era of parks wanting a new “signature “ ride, instead of a series of fillers.